Why Troy Baker Didn’t Play Joel or David in The Last of Us
Spoilers for The Last of Us HBO Episode 8 - When We Are In Need. Read our review of the episode here.
Troy Baker loves The Last of Us, and being such a vital part of the series there was no way he’d pass up getting involved with the hit HBO live-action adaptation. “I would be happy if I’d just been a clicker,” Baker tells IGN in a post-episode interview.
Well, Baker isn’t a Clicker in The Last of Us HBO series, he plays James, a member of David’s survivors in the penultimate episode of The Last of Us season one. “Neil and Craig came to me and said, "We have a role for you." And Neil was like, "It's James,"’ says Baker on how he first got involved with the HBO series.
“And I went, ‘Oh dude… who's James?’ Like, ‘Oh, right, buddy boy, the guy with the hat.’”
Baker is one of the hardest working actors in video games, and despite playing characters like the Joker and Revolver Ocelot, no role is more linked to Baker than his turn as Joel in The Last of Us video game. Across two video games, and a special One Night Live stage production, Baker portrayed the post-apocalyptic survivor Joel. But he wasn’t fighting to get the role in the HBO show, he was looking to learn from someone new.
“The thing that I wanted more than anything was for whoever was going to play Joel to just show me something new about the role,” Baker tells IGN. “Was there something that I overlooked? Was there something that I missed? Was there something that I didn't know?”
Luckily for Baker, HBO went with a choice he thinks is perfect. “The second that I found out that they cast Pedro, I was like, ‘Oh, well, we're bulletproof now.’ Because obviously his pedigree as an actor is incontrovertible, but it's also the fact that he has embraced this character with
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